THE Cub Report – It’s Get’n Interesting Now

Well hello there rc fans, here we are again for another wonderful week in the rc hobby. With any luck you were able to pull some serious trigger over the weekend. I was also able to pull some trigger, running for nearly two days straight with the new Traxxas TRX-4. Our unboxing pics went live today and, if I really get my lazy rear in gear, the full review will go up at some point on Wednesday. All I’ll say about the TRX-4 for now is that ours is still alive, we’ve had zero issues, and that all the other companies making scale crawlers better be burning some serious hours on CAD-CAM.

By the way, as all you weekly readers know, I have made a push during every single Cub Report for people to support their local hobby shops. Yup, I get it, many of you have terrible local hobby shops, others don’t have one at all, but I have always asked readers to support their LHS whenever they could. Maybe you have noticed, maybe you have not, but several of the latest releases from Traxxas have been getting shipped early to local hobby shops. Instead of a media source getting a hot scoop, Traxxas has elected to present that honor to hobby shops. Ya know, I try to give credit where it is due, and Traxxas deserves some massive props for doing that. It shows dealers that Traxxas really cares about them, plus it gives consumers like you a reason to jump in your car and visit your LHS. On the media side of things it is bad for us because we don’t get the scoop, but we’ll take that any day of the week when a manufacturer goes above and beyond to get people into an LHS.

I will keep THE Cub Report fairly short this week as I am knees deep in a TRX-4 review, but there is one more subject that I have never talked about before that I want to touch on. Ryan Dungey officially retired from MX last week. They had a big press ceremony and it was cool to see Ryan walk away from professional racing with his health and a full bank account, all at the age of only 27. I bring this up because there have been a couple of big names in rc that have retired lately, or are dern close to it. Barry Baker officially retired a few weeks ago and it sounds like Jeremy Kortz has as well. Both men have put countless hours into the hobby, sold thousands of cars, and did a great job of promoting our hobby.

There are still a lot of “older” pro rc racers out there and I have no idea how they do it. The time and dedication that it takes to be a top ten guy is hard on a 25 year old, it has to be astonishingly difficult for the older guys with a house, a family, and all the bills that go with the American dream. And while some people go into meltdown mode when they hear names like Dungey or Edwards retiring at fairly young ages, professional racing is truly something for the young. To me it seems like some people don’t retire simply because it’s all they know how to do. With the aging of many of our top racers, it will be interesting to see when some of them finally decide it is time to move on to other things and then make rc racing their fun weekend hobby.

Oh, and just one more thing. RIP Nicky Hayden, a man with such incredible talent, a man with such a hard work ethic, a man that will never be forgotten.

There ya go folks, that’s all I have for ya this week. Like always, please get out and support your local hobby shops and bash spots when ya can.